DEADLINE TODAY! 99+ stories

Posted on: 14th September 2016

Taking part in a competition is about testing one’s own abilities outside a predefined setting of personal connections, nationality, office size, or gender. It is about experimenting and developing a personal vision much more directly than in the usual architect-client relationship. And winning a competition is much more than just getting a job! It is about the possibility of growing big in a day, of shortcutting years of slow growth, or of jumping scale in the size of projects the practice is deals with, of getting a footing in a different national context, of specializing. And finally it is about publicity and recognition in and beyond the professional context – from colleagues to the general public. Yet, competitions also mean investing valuable resources in terms of time, energy and money with an uncertain outcome. Is the prize worth the effort?

The exhibition Deadline today! makes an attempt to map the reality of this system by collecting first-hand experiences and information at a European level. The result is a collection of 116 stories about competition participations, presented according to five criteria:

The thinking behind competition entries (design strategies),

Teaming-up (collaborations),

Possible effects on the office development (turning points),

Paths to getting a project built (realizations)

Unexpected follow-ups (side-effects).

wonderland is an architecture platform based in Vienna. Its aim – among others – is the pooling and sharing of knowledge of the hows and whys of establishing and developing architecture practices in Europe today. In this context, one central matter of interest is the open architecture design competition.